Dear Hillary Clinton, please stop talking about 2016

Democratic aides and strategists reportedly say it would be good if Hillary Clinton stayed out of the spotlight. Veuer's Elizabeth Keatinge (@elizkeatinge) has more.

Buzz60

SENECA FALLS, N.Y. — There’s a very familiar face at the start of the Ludovico Sculpture Trail in this town famous for its place in the history of women’s rights. There’s no nameplate or inscription and no mystery. It’s Hillary Clinton.

The bust was placed on the trail in 2013, when Clinton had already accomplished more than most people do in three or four lifetimes. Everyone knew, even then, that she would run for president, and right up until late on the night of Nov. 8, 2016, most of us would have predicted any plaque would start with the words “First woman president of the United States.”

Hillary Clinton with author and moderator Cheryl Strayed in New York.

Hillary Clinton with author and moderator Cheryl Strayed in New York.

Craig Ruttle, AP

That is not happening, and it’s time for closure.

It is easy to feel warm about Hillary Clinton when you’re eating at places like Café XIX (get it?) and stopping to grab a selfie with statues of Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Amelia Bloomer.

But the real Hillary Clinton makes sure the warmth doesn’t last. While I wandered around Seneca Falls, Clinton was driving a double-decker bus over her party.

She had previously blamed her defeat on James Comey, Russia, fake news, WikiLeaks and too much media focus on her (shockingly sloppy) email arrangements while she was secretary of State. The latest scapegoat is the Democratic National Committee. When she won the Democratic nomination, she told Kara Swisher and Walt Mossberg last week at a Recode conference, "It was bankrupt, it was on the verge of insolvency, its data was mediocre to poor, nonexistent, wrong. "

Not surprisingly, this did not go down well with Andrew Therriault, the DNC’s former director of data science. And so another feud began, another backflip into the stagnant, poisonous waters of 2016.

Bust of Hillary Rodham Clinton in Seneca Falls, N.Y.

Bust of Hillary Rodham Clinton in Seneca Falls, N.Y.

Family photo

You don’t have to believe the DNC was a perfect vessel to want to move on. In fact, it always struck me as working well below capacity almost from the moment Barack Obama won the presidency. It was hard to find anyone who thought Florida Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz was doing a bang-up job, and hard to fathom why Obama never replaced her through all those years.

And that was just one of the many unfathomable, tremendously destructive DNC developments. Why was the party so dismissive of Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders? Why didn't party functionaries and contractors at every single level go on red alert when the FBI clued them to the Russia-hacking-WikiLeaks breach? Why on earth did Donna Brazile, the acting chairman after Wasserman Schultz stepped aside, send CNN debate questions to Camp Hillary?

There is blame and blame and blame and blame, from Obama to Clinton, from Comey to Russia, and many more. But why would Clinton choose to relitigate all of this, and now of all moments? We can’t miss her if she refuses to be gone.

Now would be the time, after a terrible loss, that most people would retreat from the public stage to regroup, give the country a respite, emerge later with a plan, a passion, a graceful or at least meaningful way forward. The best role model for this is former vice president Al Gore.

Jill Lawrence in Seneca Falls, N.Y.

Jill Lawrence in Seneca Falls, N.Y.

Family photo

But that has never been Clinton’s style. She didn’t do it when she left the State Department with a 64% approval rating. She hasn’t done it after this devastating election. Instead she’s out there talking about why she lost, about the book she’s writing about why she lost, about her new organization called Onward Together. I’m sorry, but that sounds like a slog. Make America Great Again is fallacious and superficial, but at least it doesn't sound like a march through quicksand to an unspecified goal.

We’ll be hearing from Clinton around the clock when her book comes out this fall. If she must be present now, and apparently she must, she should discuss the future — not 2016, not problems in the DNC, not sexism, not Russians and Comey and negative press and not even President Trump. Every question about the past should be deflected with, "I'm looking forward, not backward. Let's talk about how more Democrats can win and more women can run."

Whether you love Clinton or really can’t stand her, I highly recommend a visit to her bust on the Seneca Falls sculpture trail. It’s an experience akin to recentering a map on your smartphone. The fraught present recedes, perspective snaps in, and Clinton takes her place in the tableau of history.

Her last chapter may not yet be written, but any plaque on that bust would be crowded even now: First lady, U.S. senator, U.S. secretary of State, first female presidential nominee of a major political party. “Human rights are women’s rights and women’s rights are human rights.” — United Nations 4th World Conference on Women, Beijing, 1995.

That is more than enough to put her in the pantheon along with Anthony, Stanton and the rest.